ALEX MANN: He founded internet service provider Internode in 1991 and he loves Tesla's electric cars.

SIMON HACKETT: The car can mostly drive itself mostly. If you forget your keys you can start the car with your i-phone and of course it is electric.

ALEX MANN: And now he is going into direct competition with their company.

SIMON HACKETT: Tesla is a very disruptive company and I see in that, I guess, an inspiration for me to be disruptive as well and for other people around us to be disruptive.

ALEX MANN: But he won't be making cars. He is honing in on the business of battery storage which could help to make or break the future of rooftop solar.

SIMON HACKETT: Alex, these are our batteries. When they are in a house they inside this nice enclosure. This is what is actually inside the box.

ALEX MANN: He hopes he'll catch the rising demand.

SIMON HACKETT: We have seen demand now that is just starting to go mad. It is just starting to show signs that we're about to enter a decade of enormous demand to install batteries alongside PV.

And now we have got requests also about, gee, can I use a battery to keep the house going when the power fails?

NEWS READER: South Australia is in the dark tonight with power out across the state.

Extreme weather has damaged critical parts of the electricity network.

ALEX MANN: Darkness stretched across South Australia in September this year when storm winds toppled transmission lines.

It triggered a chain reaction that knocked nine wind farms out of the grid and cut the state's connection to Victoria's back-up power supply.

JAY WEATHERILL, SA PREMIER: People should be aware that this could be an extended outage and should stay off the roads if at all possible.

ALEX MANN: But as the clean-up continues, regulators now warn that the latest risk to system security isn't the weather. It is the anticipated massive uptake in solar and batteries.

MATTHEW WARREN, CHIEF EXECUTIVE, AUSTRALIAN ENERGY COUNCIL: Look, it is an accidental experiment. We know we have to decarbonise our energy systems. We know we need to use more renewables, but no-one really planned to get to the levels of renewables that we have in South Australia right now.

ALEX MANN: Incredibly, one in four South Australian homes now have rooftop solar panels and the numbers are growing.

MATTHEW WARREN: Now, it could be as early as 2023 when the energy coming from rooftop systems in South Australia is all the electricity that state needs to run the grid.

Well, that is interesting, that poses technical challenges in how we keep the grid stable and how we bring other generators in to support and augment that.

So it is technically quite challenging and we need to think about it now.

PAUL ROBERTS, SA POWER NETWORKS: This is an example of the batteries of about 100 which we have installed in Salisbury and Adelaide's northern suburbs as part of a major trial.

ALEX MANN: Across Australia trials like this one are desperately searching for a way to include battery storage into the future energy mix.

PAUL ROBERTS: We are trying to see if we can actually avoid investing in more in network capacity in the area. Instead of spending $3 million upgrading the network we would like to see where the customer is investing in batteries and solar, could mean we could actually avoid that investment and therefore reduce over the long term prices for customers.

ALEX MANN: South Australian power networks want to effectively manage the supply of power and to do this they are subsidising batteries for people with solar panels and using the extra power they generate to help stabilise the grid.

PAUL ROBERTS: Clearly, there will be challenges, but this facility is an example of how we are planning for that future.

ALEX MANN: But, in the meantime, the states still needs a secure power source.

MATTHEW WARREN: You can't simply rely on an end connector for all of the system's security because if the interconnector drops out or there is a fault or whatever happens to it, there is no system security, there is nothing regulating frequency and voltage in the grid.

ALEX MANN: Matthew Warren says that the State Government's solution, more gas-fired generation or a second interstate connection could push up prices and push even more people to solar and batteries.

MATTHEW WARREN: Most solutions, by definition, tend to push up prices because if they were cheaper, we would do them anyway.

And this has always been the challenge of decarbonising energy systems.

It is more expensive, it is not cheaper and you may get short-run benefits of running extra supply, but once you lose the large thermal generators like we have in South Australia, then we see prices increase and the cost of infrastructure further increases cost.

TOM KOUTSANTONIS, SA ENERGY MINISTER: In the short-term the withdrawal of coal-fired generation potentially will leave a supply gap in the market that is required to be met by other forms of generation.

ALEX MANN: The South Australian Government has been criticised for its overreliance on renewable energies, but they point the finger at the Federal Government saying that without a national framework, they are powerless to make meaningful changes.

TOM KOUTSANTONIS: What we are attempting to do here is undertake regulatory tests, investment decisions on the basis of there being no national policy on renewable energy and energy policy so without that national framework, you are going to get these perverse outcomes.

JOSH FRYDENBERG, FEDERAL ENERGY MINISTER: Those South Australian, Queensland, Victorian governments have all maintained that they are proceeding with their own state-based targets.

We would ask for them to rethink that, bearing in mind the implications it has for cost for their own state constituents.

ALEX MANN: The Federal Government has commissioned its chief scientist to look into energy security.

JOSH FRYDENBERG: We are doing a review in 2017. We will see if those settings are right, but right now they seemed to be working and if the state government has got a complaint then maybe it needs to look in its own backyard.

ALEX MANN: While the blame game rages on, Australia's transition to rooftop solar is gathering pace as consumers across the country decide to go it alone.

SIMON HACKETT: I think all regulators and all governments necessarily play catch-up for a while when there is an enormous technology shift and this is a huge shift happening, this is a huge empowering shift for consumers in having much more control over their energy security and over their energy production.

So buckle in for the ride and be prepared to adapt as consumers drive you to adapt.